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Georgetown law professor Rebecca Tushnet’s 43(B)log (“false advertising and more”) has been following the legal dispute between the Roman Catholic Sovereign Military Order of Malta (SMOM) and a rival “Ecumenical Order” based in Florida. SMOM, which enjoys a reputation considerable standing, took its ecumenical rival to a district court in Florida 2011 on trademark grounds – only […]

Glenn Beck’s “End-Times Prophet” Joel Richardson has commended a novel by a certain Luke Montgomery, entitled A Deceit to Die For. From the author’s website: When history professor Ian O’Brien purchases an old collection of letters and books, he unknowingly steps into the world of a shadowy organization. His family is soon caught up in a web […]

A piece by Sheera Frenkel in the Times quotes archaeologist Aviram Oshri on the birthplace of Jesus (available via syndication at the Australian): Archaeologists have long believed that Mary may have given birth to Jesus in Bethlehem of the Galilee, a hillside village far away in northern Israel. “I think the genuine site of the Nativity is here, […]

Last night, British television (ITV) broadcast Joanna Lumley: The Search for Noah’s Ark, in which the actress travelled around the middle east and beyond looking for evidence of the Biblical story. The programme lasted just over an hour (padded out to 1:30 by adverts), and contains some interesting location filming and interviews, but the main attraction […]

A rant by anti-Kinsey obsessive Judith Reisman in defence of a screed by anti-gay “preacher” Bradlee Dean attacking Elena Kagan has led to a new spat between Wikipedia and WND (still widely known as WorldNetDaily). Reisman had written that Wikipedia’s trashing of iconoclastic, ordained preacher Bradlee Dean proves that the heavy-metal drummer and his band have been doing a great job […]

Back in August, I noted opposition to a visit to Britain by controversial faith healer Todd Bentley. Malcolm Wicks, MP for Croydon, called for Bentley to be banned from entering the country, and this was eventually the Home Secretary’s decision. Wicks was at the time already ill with cancer, and he died aged 65 a few […]

From the Observer: In September, Polish free press campaigners produced a statement that they said was from [UKIP leader Nigel] Farage in support of Father Tadeusz Rydzyk, a Polish priest and founder of Radio Maryja and its associated outlets, whose stations stand accused of pumping out strongly antisemitic and homophobic material. Last year Rydzyk greeted […]

UPDATE: The EDL denies that the Tweet was genuine, and state that they are “in contact with Twitter” UPDATE 2: The source of the screenshot has posted a video – see here. The video shows a computer desktop, on which the relevant Twitter page is shown to be open in the Opera browser . He uses […]

From the Telegraph: Hotel owners around the pyramid-shaped Mount Rtanj, in the east of [Serbia] , say that bookings are flooding in, with believers in the [Mayan Calendar] prophecy hoping that its purported mysterious powers will save them from the apocalypse. Adherents of the end-of-the-world scenario think the 5,100ft-high mountain, part of the Carpathian range, […]

From the London Times: Nadine Dorries, the Tory MP who appeared on I’m a Celebrity … Get Me Out of Here!, has accused journalists of invading her privacy and threatened to call the police if they turn up to her constituency office. This is, of course, Dorries’ default position when it comes to unwelcome attention: in the […]

My Book Reviews

Note on Attacks

Anyone who comments on current affairs on-line risks being smeared by attack sites and/or abusive Tweets. This is particularly so if one chooses to challenge dishonesty or other kinds of reprehensible behaviour.

As a result of making a stand in a few particular instances, I have become the focus of a number of such attacks. Those who have targeted me include: a Nigerian evangelist who believes in "child witches"; former activists with the EDL; a man with a long history of bad debt and grandiosity; a sockpuppeting tabloid journalist; and a self-serving "celebrity" MP who deploys smears to discourage scrutiny.

The bad faith of such sites and Tweets ought to be self-evident. However, any readers interested in the true background can read this and this.